Smart watches are not a new concept.

In June 2003, Microsoft announced its grand plan to bring the Internet to wristwatches using its Smart Personal Objects Technology. The company partnered with various watchmakers, including Citizen, Fossil, and Suunto, to create timepieces that allowed you to check messages and calendar appointments, as well as weather, news, stock prices, and sports scores, all from your wrist.

While novel and interesting, the watches never took off, and in April 2008, Microsoft decided to pull the plug on the smart-watch business. But were those watches really a bad idea or simply a case of an idea being ahead of its time?

It may be the latter, as smart watches seem to be making a comeback.… Read more

What's the No. 1 requested feature people want in an e-ink e-reader?

According to Barnes & Noble, it's an integrated light, which is why the company spent the last two years developing the new $139 Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, available today for preorder and shipping in early May.

I had a chance to play around with the new Nook at a launch event in New York and, as you can see from the pictures, except for the gray border around the edge, it looks identical to the standard $99 Nook Simple Touch, which remains on the market. … Read more

Amazon has updated the firmware for the Kindle Touch to version 5.1 and it actually has a few significant feature enhancements, including one that a lot of folks have been clamoring for: a landscape reading mode.

When Amazon first released the Kindle Touch, some people were upset you couldn't turn the device horizontally and read with more words on a line (for people who read with larger font sizes, landscape reading makes a lot of sense). Landscape mode was available in the $79 non-touch Kindle but not the touch-screen step-up model, which starts at $99. … Read more

One of the big benefits of the new iPad's high-resolution display is how sharp it renders text--and how good e-books and other text-based content looks on it.

Apple, of course, has already updated its iBooks e-reader app to optimize it for the new display. And now Amazon has introduced a new version of Kindle for iPad that's also optimized for the new iPad's display.

Amazon says that customers reading on the new iPad will "find crisper fonts and a new library view where covers look brighter and crisper than ever."

Amazon is also bringing over … Read more

Barnes & Noble hasn't officially dropped the price of its $99 Nook Simple Touch e-reader, but you can save $20 until March 18 if you buy it with a MasterCard. The deal is available at all Barnes & Noble's stores nationwide and online at BN.com and also applies to the Nook Color, which can be had for $149.

The Nook Simple Touch is an e-ink e-reader that competes with Amazon's Kindle Touch, which starts at $99 for the ad-supported model. Both products have received Editors' Choice awards from CNET. Amazon sells the standard, non-touch-screen version of … Read more

With the boom in e-readers, self-publishing has become big business, and Author Solutions, one of the largest self-publishers in the U.S., has entered the DIY e-book market in a big way with Booktango.

Whether Booktango should be called an "e-book generating app" or "self-publishing platform" is hard to say, but it basically provides a free and simple way to upload your manuscript, edit it for proper formatting, then automatically serve it up to various e-bookstores, including Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks.

On the surface, Booktango, which bears the "beta" tag, looks fairly slick … Read more

The New York Times today published a long piece about Barnes & Noble taking on Amazon in the "fight of its life." Buried in the middle of the two-page article is a small mention of engineers "putting the final touches on their [Barnes & Noble's] fifth e-reading device, a product that executives said would be released sometime this spring."

No details were offered beyond that, with a Barnes & Noble spokesperson declining to comment further. But the obvious question is what is it?

Another tablet, perhaps a larger model (think iPad size but with a $… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Kids can be rough on electronics, and yet they can't keep their hands off of them. Even the roughest toddler will have a hard time busting up your iPad once it's strapped into CTA Digital's Inflatable Cube.

This product should win a prize for accurate product naming. It's simply an inflatable cube with a built-in case on one side for your iPad or Kindle Fire.

Your tender tablet is recessed into the cube, so your enthusiastic little angel will have to work extra hard to damage it.

Granted, you'll have to be a little … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Qualcomm's Mirasol display technology, which was supposed to be the next big thing in e-readers, still hasn't made it into a product in the U.S. or Europe, but the Bambook Sunflower E-Reader is coming to China in February.

"With the Bambook Sunflower e-Reader, Shanghai Nutshell and Shanda have raised consumer expectations for digital reading, both in terms of color content and an interactive user experience," said Clarence Chui, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. … Read more